Christianity by the Century: Seventh Century CE (600-700)

Christianity by the Century: 7th Century CE (600 – 700)

A young Arab girl screams in the night: “They’re shooting fiery arrows in my face!” “They” were two Christian monks—John and Paul—who had been traveling to see Mount Sinai in the predominantly Jewish-ruled area of the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Some Arabs kidnapped them and brought them to their home in Himyar where they are bound and prepared to be sacrificed in the morning. When the girl starts screaming, the monks exclaim, “If you convert [to Christianity], we’ll stop shooting the fiery arrows at your face.” “Yes! She calls out, “Yes, I will convert to whatever god makes this pain go away!”

The monks take the pain away, and she converts immediately. Likewise, everyone in her local community is amazed and immediately converts. The monks, John and Paul, reason that causing pain helped because without healing the girl of something so severe, how would she know their God is the right God?

This unsettling story, preserved in a sixth-century Syriac manuscript, captures some essential concepts about the religious world on the eve of the seventh century.

1. Violence had become the norm, as political turmoil across Europe and the Middle East affected all aspects of life. Power and violence became the primary currency of the world and thus became the primary lens through which people understood religion at the time.
2. Christianity had become the new world power, focused on expansion (through a combination of proselytizing, coercion, and violence) even as it was torn by internal power struggles.
3. Against this backdrop, where Christians struggled to dominate Jews and convert everyone else, Islam was born.
4. Christian efforts to convert and control created vacuums through which heretical Christians and women found new outlets for religious expression. Islam moved in where oppressed Christians felt very little loyalty to their Byzantine rulers.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims

At the beginning of the seventh century, Jews everywhere faced intense persecution from Christians. Both Visigoths in Spain and the Byzantine authorities from the east forced Christian conversions, legally banned Jewish religious practices, and frequently stirred up riots. Even though social interaction persisted between Jews and Christians, the Church formally prohibited Christians from participating in Jewish celebrations, attending synagogues, or utilizing Jewish medical services. John Chrysystom, Archbishop of Constantinople, complained that some of his congregants were going to synagogue. It disturbed him that his Christian flock didn’t appreciate the strong distinction from Judaism. Christians insisted that they were the rightful heirs to Israel, and their forced conversions were meant to consolidate Christian power.

Muhammed received his first revelation in 610 in Mecca at age 40, and he led a period of peaceful preaching. But twelve years later, following an eruption of severe persecution, he and his followers migrated to Medina and established the first Islamic state. He quickly established political and military power. By the time of his death in 632, he had united the Arabian Peninsula under Islam (where the fictitious little girl had been healed and converted to Christianity).

Islam moved in

With military successes in hand, Islamic military victory spread quickly and easily to the north and west, taking key Christian cities, such as Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The Byzantine Empire’s influence shrunk considerably, and Islam introduced a new legal structure. Jews generally welcomed the new systems because they were less oppressive than the Byzantine authorities. They offered Jews increased religious, legal, and economic stability, even though Jews continued to function as second-class citizens.

Under early Islamic rule, Christians retained the right to practice their faith, though as a subordinate community they did pay special taxes. But unsurprisingly, despite low levels of forced conversion, many nominal Christians gradually shifted toward Islam for economic reasons.

At first, Christians in the region considered the invasion as the fulfillment of scriptural promises. Armenian bishops and Nestorian monks thought of the invaders as descendants of Abraham fulfilling a divine role. They easily adapted to Islamic rule, but ultimately the Byzantine Empire was finally forced to rethink its territory and economy, leaving behind the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and West Asia).

Christian conversions

The seventh century is often remembered as an age of conquest. Conversion was frequently entangled with violence—not because religions were inherently violent, but because they operated within violent realities. The monks’ miracle for the little Arab girl is one expression of this dynamic: Arabs kidnapping Christians, Christians fighting Jews, all of them living with instability, and Christians holding onto power by converting wherever possible.

Meanwhile, Christians themselves exhibited growing rifts between factions, particularly at the East-West seams. Eastern (Byzantine) political and intellectual elites paid little attention to the Arab invaders at first. They were too preoccupied with their religious treatises and legal measures against the Jews.

Western (Latin) divisions of Christianity, however, were forced to adapt quickly and flexibly to the volatile situations among the multiple Germanic territories. The Bishop of Rome tried to keep allegiance to the Eastern emperor but was always forced to negotiate with multiple rulers of the former Western provinces.

These pagan Germanic leaders often embraced Christianity in order to strengthen their own legitimacy and to manage populations from former Roman territories. Although these Christian leaders often existed alongside pagan traditions, they also kept their eye on maintaining power and authority. Christian stories could be viewed through the lens of traditional hero sagas, but Christians would also demonstrate their power by destroying sacred pagan trees.

Christian power

In such a world, the power struggles of prior centuries continued and manifested in the form of who controlled the narrative of what was religious truth. It was now measured in visible forms of power: to command loyalty, to hold territory, to outlast rivals, to have the power to heal. Theology became less about fine distinctions and more about navigating new political realities, particularly among Germanic kingdoms. Whether through miracles, missionary acts, or military success, the ability to act upon the world became a primary way of knowing what—and who—was true.

Power required the enforcement of hierarchy, so the church inevitably became increasingly involved in politics, with missionaries and bishops becoming advisors to kings who also spread the influence of the church.

However, with the fragmentation of the Western Roman Empire, the intellectual networks that had once unified Christianity gave way to more localized forms. Conversion often served purposes of political governance and alliance as much as belief. In the east, Christian communities extended into Persia, India, and China, where a mission reached the imperial court in 635.

It is with some irony to note that although the greater number of Christians remained in the East, the developments in the West actually set the stage for major developments in the Christian world during the subsequent Middle Ages. For example, in Anglo-Saxon England, rulers adopted Christianity to strengthen political alliances. The Synod of Whitby, 664, unified the English church under Roman authority, aligning them with the continent.

The shadow story: gnostics, women, and monasteries

Although hierarchical structures deemed all non-compliant Christians heretical, these Christians who held no positions of power continued to evolve in the shadow of the official church. Even though the Germanic form of Arianism (the teaching that Jesus was fully human but not fully divine) finally succumbed to mainstream Catholic belief, several ‘gnostic’-type traditions did persist into and beyond the seventh century.

Remnants of fifth-century Gnostic schools persisted in the Near East and later reappeared in Europe. For the most part, these groups held to dualistic beliefs that directly contradicted mainstream doctrine. Dualism loosely espoused the distinction between spiritual reality and material life, or between good and evil. This philosophical perspective appeared to influence other groups who later evolved into Bogomils and Cathars.

In the East, the ancient tradition of Mandaeans (followers of John the Baptist) was able to remain in their established locations in southern Mesopotamia. But a new form of dualistic Christianity, known as Paulician, also rose up in Armenia, in opposition to the mainstream Byzantine church.

Christians of India, who traced their origin to Thomas the Apostle, continued to flourish as part of the Church of the East. They embraced Hindu culture and Syrian liturgy but leaned toward the dualistic type of Christian theology.

Women also lived in the shadow of church hierarchical power. Following the fifth-century influence of St. Augustine, the official church increasingly enforced rules for women to be submissive and chaste, as they were linked to Eve’s weakness and sexual temptation.

But the rise of monasticism offered a positive alternative for women who sought alternatives to marriage and child-bearing. It was during this period that female abbesses of dual monasteries (homes to both men and women) were held in high esteem, commanded respect, and exercised great authority.

A Century That Remade the Religious World

Christianity—either formally or within the shadows—was not retreating in the seventh century; it was reorganizing.

Despite persistent efforts to define orthodoxy, diversity persisted. Groups such as the Paulicians and the Mandaeans preserved elements of earlier traditions, while movements like Manichaeism shifted eastward and adapted to new cultural settings.

No single version of Christianity fully dominated. The classic Christianity preserved in Italy differed from the vigorous Frankish Christianity, which was also different from the Christianity that flourished in Ireland. But beneath the surface, alternative visions persevered.

Islam became a new force to reckon with, but it did little to change the Christian trajectory of the seventh century other than a geographical shift.

The fictitious monks who inflicted pain in order to heal it were not an anomaly. They were expressions of a broader cultural logic shared across religious boundaries. The seventh century did not simply spread religions across new territories. It reshaped the very criteria by which religious truth was recognized, contested, and lived—and in doing so, set patterns that would continue to shape the centuries that followed.

This is the twelfth in a series of Bible and Beyond blog posts, Christian History by the Century, focusing on the key developments that influenced Christianity, century by century. Beginning with the fifth century BCE, we have traced historical events and ideas that influenced future generations of those who came to identify themselves as Christian.